Wonderful Sunday, not so wonderful sunburn.

I was hoping for BBQ weather sunday, we got the Sun in the end shame about the 35mph gusts of wind!

 

Still undeterred by the fact even a shed was blown over on the allotment a few rows over I started by helping my plot neighbour dig over his old strawberry patch,  this involved me *Cough* 'saving' 70 odd runners (no idea of the variety) to expand my Strawberry bed to almost 100 plants.  I planted them in and afterwards gave them a sprinkling of Blood, Fish and Bone (BFB) along with a decent soaking, I am pretty sure they are a little closer together than they should be but time will tell.

 

 

Here we can see my other reason for being down the allotment today, I planted out the first 80 Peas (Kelvedon Wonder) I have another 80 at home to put out next weekend and I also sowed in the ground approximately another 100 in this row.  I was going to sow 80 peas followed by 5 more sowings of 80 successionally at home but they take up so much space and the weathers turned now so I am risking it direct sowing.)

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I did uncover a first early potato by accident earlier in the week and that was throwing off roots nicely so the soils definetly warmed up considerably in the past week which is good news.  I will do another line of beetroot soon and direct sow some lettuce as my transplants in the bed at home don't seem to be taking well.

 

 



Easter weekend fun .

Easter weekend was cold but importantly it was dry and had been for a few days which meant I could really get stuck in on the allotment doing jobs, so much for 4 days off!.

 

 

Below is one of my original beds which I extended by 5ft to the left after measuring and finding out my 30ft x45ft 5 rod plot was actually only 25ft by 45ft  just over 4 rods with the path included.  I also dug it all over, weeded and put in some Chard from home as well as some very leggy  mange tout (Golden Sweet) peas which I don't expect to do much but they might recover.

 

This is the bed where my sweetcorn will be going in and I covered it with a layer of manure and bedding which is quite fresh and ordinarily I wouldn't do as it is a no no however seeing as the weather has been so cold with no signs of change I am gambling on it being later in the ground.  The sweet corn goes in around June and the manure will have the burn chance taken out of it by then and as a side bonus it will be acting as a weed mulch. 

(bottom right corner you can see a mass patch of scallions, so easy to grow and fire and forget really no care needed) 

 

The picture below shows my first fruiting area which is red currant, white currant, black currant and rasperberry .  I intend to build a fruit cage around this area as I lost a majority of currants particularly to birds last year, undecided yet wether to make with chicken wire or 1" gap pea netting obviously there is a big cost difference but the chicken wire should last years whereas the pea netting might only last 1 or 2 seasons.

 

 

Although I don't have pictures I also cleared up my strawberry bed and I am debating wether to dig them all up and then lay weed membrane to plant through. Weeding a strawberry patch without disturbing them is a serious pain due to their shallow rooting and keeps fruit cleaner but the downside is the membrane makes a nice safe home for slugs.